Monday’s Boston Marathon will be Carlos Sanchez’s 38th. It will be his granddaughter Mia Sanchez’s second.
Running is a family tradition that Carlos credits to his daughter, Mia’s aunt.
“I just kind of mentioned to her one day, ‘hey, you wanted to run a marathon one day. Why don’t we do so?’ And this is about 2008, early 2008,” Carlos said. “So we signed up for Chicago in 2008 and she and I ran together.”
Carlos was hooked after that, but didn’t consider aiming for the Boston Marathon until later.
“At the time, my early marathon years, it just seemed, ‘OK, this Boston Marathon is for elite athletes. Only the superhumans can get to that one,’” Carlos said. “And that was it. It was just a number qualifying time that was always in the back of my mind.”
Then, last year, he decided to try to achieve his qualifying time.
“That’s when I called Mia and suggested to her that she join me in that marathon,” Carlos said.
“I thought it was kind of a crazy idea to do 26.2 miles,” Mia said. “That just seemed way too long and insane, but when he called me to ask if I wanted to run in California with him, I couldn’t say no. And I guess that’s where I started my training the next day.”
Mia was six the first time Carlos ran a marathon.
“I started running when I was 11 for 7th grade cross country, primarily inspired by my grandpa,” Mia said.
She ended up running long distance on a team at St. Edward’s University but had never run a marathon and had only eight weeks to prepare.
“I was really excited and a little scared,” Mia said. “It’s always something that I wanted to do with him, but to have to run 26.2 miles and maybe or maybe not Boston qualify was very scary for me.”
But they both did it.
It’s extremely amazing,” Carlos said. “Just so much pride and joy that we have achieved this, my granddaughter and I. It may be the first documented case of a grandfather and granddaughter qualifying by time and then running the Boston Marathon. And it’s just an amazing feeling.”
Mia is currently in her second year at Harvard studying environmental health. So she’ll be running on home turf.
“Every Saturday I go out and I run pretty much along the course…. and I get to picture myself what that’s going to look like on race day with a lot more people around me than what I typically see on a Saturday. And it’s just really exciting,” Mia said.
They’ll be split up on race day but say they’ll still find ways to share the experience.
“Just knowing that we’re both there, I think, is something that will definitely motivate me and keep me going throughout the whole course… And then afterwards just getting to wait and watch him cross the finish line is definitely gonna be very special,” Mia said.
“We have a picture of Mia when she was six years old here, in the Austin Marathon… She’s holding my hand, and we’re kind of running down the street a little bit,” Carlos said. “We made sure to recreate that photo at the finish in California to have a side by side when she was six years old and now 23 years old.”
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